Ariadne florentina; six lectures on wood and metal engraving, with appendix; given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas term, 1872.

Front matter

ARIADNE FLORENTINA

SIX LECTURES

ON

Introduction

IN a letter written in 1876, the year in which this volume was first published, Mr. Ruskin spoke of feeling it to be his " distinct duty " (I cite his exact words), " to cultivate the rare analytic and demonstrative faculty of me, rather than the enthusiastic one which has been common to so many." The intention was wise, for his enthusiastic temper was wearing him out by its incessant drain of nervous energy. The character of these very lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving is marked by the combination of what he justly calls his *' rare analytic and demonstrative faculty " with qualities which have their source in the emotions. It is like many of Mr. Ruskin's books, not a compact body of exact teaching, but a rare compound of precise instruction with various stimulating more or less personal

VI INTRODUCTION.

discourse. It displays the bounty of his natural gifts, the wide range of his attainments, his clear insight and discernment, his untiring industry, his power of concentrated attention, but it shows also his readiness to be distracted from one subject of attention to another, the impatience of his spirit, his large self-cofidence, his passionate morality, and his zeal for righteousness. His zeal, the child of his enthusiastic temper, often carries him too fast and far for the man of mere commonplace equipment to follow. Zeal is a sign of folly to the world. But happily the zealous are sometimes indifferent to the estimate of the world.

Mr. Lowell once said in a lecture, in speaking of Mr. Ruskin, that he held " a divining rod of exquisite sensitiveness for the rarer and more recondite sources of purifying enjoyment as well as for those more obvious and nearer to the surface." It is a true saying, and in re-reading Mr. Ruskin's books I am constantly reminded of my own great debt to him in his opening to me of

INTRODUCTION. Vll

many sources of highest enjoyment, which, without his work, might probably have remained closed. I believe that many of Mr. Ruskin's readers feel a like obligation to him, and similar cause for gratitude. It will surely be the case with readers who make an acquaintance w^th the art of engraving through these pages. " Ariadne Florentina " is in small part a scientific treatise, but there is no other book comparable to it in opening the more recondite sources of interest and enjoyment in the study of the art of engraving, and of its relations to the other arts.

Nor is it to the harm of these lectures that they contain assertions which are open to question, and doctrine which the student may hesitate to accept even on the authority of such a master. It is little more than a truism that the most serviceable teachers are not those whose every word may be accepted as correct and reasonable, but rather those who, however biassed by prepossessions and influenced by transient moods,

Vlll INTRODUCTION.

or any other condition which interferes with the perception and statement of truth, have yet such vigorous individuality, such excellence of special gifts, or such intensity of moral sentiment, as to rouse the dull attention, and compel their students to the exercise of their own minds. The very controversy and opposition which Mr. Ruskin's writings have called forth are proof of their capacity to stimulate thought, and of their value in quickening the intelligence to discern what without their help it might never have se^n.

The lectures comprised in this volume, originally delivered at Oxford in 1872, were revised and enlarged in 1874 while Mr. Ruskin was in Italy, and living for a time in the great Franciscan monastery at Assisi. He was mainly engaged while there in copying, and in directing the work of an assistant in copying, the frescos of Giotto and of Cimabue, which make the church at Assisi one of the most interesting and instructive places of pilgrimage for the stu-

INTRODUCTION. IX

dent of the faith and work of the Middle Ages. On the 19th of June, 1874, he wrote: " Sacristan's Cell, Monastery of Assisi. — I am wholly occupied just now on Giotto's ' Poverty.' It is fine ; but on the whole I am greatly disappointed with Giotto on close study, and, on the contrary, altogether amazed at the power of Cimabue, before wholly unknown to me. Botticelli remains where he was, only because he couldn't get higher, in my mind, after a month's work on him. I wish I could give him the rest of my life; but it must be broken into small pieces. If a blessing comes on the fragments they may one day multiply.

" I write the supplementary part of my Lectures on Line here, every morning, in absolute quiet, looking out on the Apennines,— St. Francis lying within thirty yards of me.

" Cimabue is a discovery to me wholly unexpected. Vasari mistakes as usual the place where he is ; and everybody passing, as I did myself, the apparently coarse Ma-

X INTRODUCTION.

donna of the * Scuola Greca.' At last I set myself on it in a bright day, and upset Giotto from his pedestal in a minute or two's close look."

"June 20th. Vasari is all right about the upper church, but not the lower. The large frescos in upper church are grand; but it is one Madonna in the lower that has knocked me over. I am going to set to work on her to-day."

"June 2 1 St. Cimabue's mind was entirely formed by the Gospels and the book of Genesis ; his art, as you know, what he could receive from Byzantine masters, and his main disposition, — compassion . . . He can't, by any effort, make his Madonna look as if she were sitting in her throne. She is merely standing stumpily. But I am prepared to assert her for the sublimest Mater Dolorosa ever painted, so far as my knowledge extends, in the Italian schools. I am going to draw her, and think I can. But do you suppose my power either of drawing or seeing her is merely because I have

INTRODUCTION. XI

^l painter's eye? I must have that, to begin with; but the reason I can see her or draw her (if, indeed, I can) is because I liave read, this morning, the ixth of Jeremiah, and understood that also."

" Lucca, 1 2th August. — Giotto is not dethroned, at least, not diminished in his own rank and place, which is of human passion. In mystic and majestic thought Cimabue leads wholly, and the Byzantines generally. Giotto and Taddeo Gaddi are loving realists of little things. The finest thing of Giotto's in Assisi is not the 'Poverty' or 'Chastity,' but a little group of people in the street, looking at a boy who has just been restored to life after falling out of a three pair of stairs' window. The Christ, St, Francis and Charity are all three total failures in the great 'Poverty' fresco, and in the ' Chastity ' she herself and Fortitude are quite valueless, while Obedience, in the opposite one, is monstrous. But the sweetness of a monk reading on the grass while St. Francis receives the stigmata, and the

XU INTRODUCTION.

sudden passion of a woman, clasping her hands and thanking God for the boy brought to Hfe, are more pure and exquisite than anything of the subsequent schools."

These extracts show how strong at this period was Mr. Ruskin's interest in those studies of painting to which so much of his earlier life had been devoted. But the attentive reader of the followmg pages will find frequent occasion to note indications of the change in the direction of his thought toward the conditions of modern life, which make the fine arts of the present period no longer the expression of deep and prevailing spiritual moods, but the mirror, for the most part, of debased feeling, and of selfish materialism. Mr. Ruskin's indignant passion at the controlling moral forces of society, at the general indifference to wrongs that might be corrected, at the growth of a spirit which rejects the authority of wisdom, and is heedless alike of the beauty in nature and in human character and work, was to become more and more apparent in

INTRODUCTION. XIU

his writings, and to give a singular tone to his later books. It is of interest to observe how it colors and exalts the teaching of this volume, and makes it not more a treatise on Line in Art than on Line of Conduct.

C. E. N.

Contents

LECTURE I.

PAGE DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING ... I

LECTURE IL

Appendix

ARTICLE PAGE

I. NOTES ON THE PRESENT STATE OF ENGRAVING IN

ENGLAND 256

11. DETACHED NOTES 279

LIST OF PLATES.

To face page

Diagram .• 48

Fig. 2. Facsimile Woodcut from Holbein's " Dan'ce of Death " — The Last Furrow . 83

Fig. 3. Facsimile Woodcut from Holbein's "Dance of Death" — The Two Preachers . 84

PLATE

I. Things Celestial and Terrestrial as apparent to the English Mind

2. The Star of Florence . . , .

3. Astrologia. " At Ev'ning, from the Top 01

Fesole" . . . . .

4. Poesia. "By the Springs of Parnassus"

100 108

129 137

5. "Heat considered as a Mode of Motion" —

Florentine Natural Philosophy . . .164

6. Fairness of the Sea and Air. In Venice and

Athens 169

Fig. 5. Facsimile Woodcut from Holbein's "Dance of Death" — The Child's Bedtime . 185 xviii LIST OF PLATES.

PLATE To face pa^e

Fig. 6. Facsimile Woodcut from Holbein's " Dance of Death " — " He that hath Ears TO Hear, Let him Hear" .... i86

7. SiBILLA CUMANA. FOR A TiME, AND TiMES . 233

8. The Nymph beloved of Apollo (Michael

Angelo) . . 235

9. SiBILLA HeLLESPONTICA. IN THE WOODS OF

Ida 236

ID. SiBILLA LiBICA. GrASS OF THE DeSERT . . 24I

Obediente Domino 257

The Coronation in the Garden . - . . 280

ARIADNE FLORENTINA.

LECTURE I.

DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING.

I. The entrance on my duty for to-day begins the fourth year of my official work in Oxford ; and I doubt not that some of my audience are asking themselves, very doubtfully — at all events, I ask myself, very anxiously — what has been done.

For practical result, I have not much to show. I announced, a fortnight since, that I would meet, the day before yesterday, any gentleman who wished to attend this course for purposes of study. My class, so minded, numbers four, of whom three wish to be artists, and ought not therefore, by rights, to be at Oxford at all ; and the fourth is the last remaining unit of the class I had last year.

I

2. Yet I neither in this reproach myself, nor, if I could, would I reproach the students who are not here. I do not reproach myself; for it was impossible for me to attend properly to the schools and to write the grammar for them at the same time ; and I do not blame the absent students for not attending a school from which I have generally been absent myself In all this, there is much to be mended, but, in true light, nothing to be regretted.

I say, I had to write my school grammar. These three volumes of lectures under my hand,* contain, carefully set down, the things 1 want you first to know. None of my writings are done fluently ; the second volume of '^ Modern Painters " was all of it written twice — most of it, four times, — over ; and these lectures have been written, I don't know how many times. You may think that this was done merely in an author's vanity, not in a tutor's care. To the vanity I plead guilty, — no man is more intensely vain than I am ; but my vanity is set on having it known of me that I am a good master, not in having it said of me that I am

* "Inaugural Series," " Aratra Pentelici," and "Eagle's

Nest."

a smooth author. My vanity is never more wounded than in being called a fine writer, meaning — that nobody need mind what I say.

3. Well, then, besides this vanity, I have some solicitude for your progress. You may give me credit for it or not, as you choose, but it is sincere. And that your advance may be safe, I have taken the best pains I could in laying down laws for it. In these three years I have got my grammar written, and, with the help of many friends, all working instruments in good order ; and now we will try what we can do. Not that, even now, you are to depend on my presence with you in personal teaching. I shall henceforward think of the lectures less, of the schools more ; but my best work for the schools will often be by drawing in Florence or in Lancashire — not here.

4. I have already told you several times that the course through which I mean every student in these schools should pass, is one which shall enable them to understand the elementary principles of the finest art. It will necessarily be severe, and seem to lead to no immediate result. Some of you will, on the contrary, wish to be taught what is immediately easy, and gives prospect of a manifest success.

But suppose they should come to the Professor of Logic and Rhetoric, and tell him they want to be taught to preach like Mr. Spurgeon, or the Bishop of .

He would say to them, — I cannot, and if I could I would not, tell you how to preach like

Mr. Spurgeon, or the Bishop of . Your

own character will form your style ; your own zeal will direct it ; your own obstinacy or ignorance may limit or exaggerate it; but my business is to prevent, as far as I can, your having any particular style ; and to teach you the laws of all language, and the essential power of your own.

In like manner, this course, which I propose to you in art, will be calculated only to give you judgment and method in future study, to establish to your conviction the laws of general art, and to enable you to draw, if not with genius, at least with sense and propriety.

The course, so far as it consists in practice, will be defined in my Instructions for the schools. And the theory connected with that practice is set down in the three lectures at the end of the first course I dehvered — those on Line, Light, and Colour.

You will have, therefore, to get this book,* and it is the only one which you will need to have of your own, — the others are placed, for reference, where they will be accessible to you.

5. In the 139th paragraph it states the order of your practical study in these terms : —

^' I wish you to begin by getting command of line ; — that is to say, by learning to draw a steady line^ limiting with absolute correctness the form or space you intend it to Hmit ; to proceed by getting command over flat tints, so that you may be able to fill the spaces you have enclosed evenly, either with shade or colour, according to the school you adopt ; and, finally, to obtain the power of adding such fineness of drawing, within the masses, as shall express their undulation, and their characters of form and texture."

And now, since in your course of practice you are first required to attain the power of drawing lines accurately and delicately, so in

* My inaugural series of seven lectures (now published uniform in size with this edition. 1890).

D I. DEFINITION OF

the course of theory, or grammar, I wish you first to learn the principles of linear design, exemphfied by the schools which (§ 137) you will find characterized as the Schools of Line.

6„ If 1 had command of as much time as I should likt to spend with you on this subject, I would begin with the early forms of art which used the simplest linear elements of design. But^ for general service and interest, it will be better that I should sketch what has been accomplished by the greatest masters in that manner ; the rather that their work . is more or less accessible to all, and has developed into the vast industries of modern engraving, one of the most powerful existing influences of education and sources of pleasure among civilized people.

And this investigation, so far from interrupting, will facilitate our examination of the history of the nobler arts. You will s-^je in the preface to my lectures on Greek s'-adpture that I intend them to be followed by a course on architecture, and that by one on Florentine sculpture. But the art of engraving is so manifestly, at Florence, though not less essentially elsewhere, a basis of style both in architecture and sculpture, that it is absolutely necessary I should explain to you in what the skill of the engraver consists, before I can define with accuracy that of more admired artists. For engraving, though not altogether in the method of which you see examples in the print-shops of the High Street, is, indeed, a prior art to that either of building or sculpture, and is an inseparable part of both, when they are rightly practised.

7. And while we thus examine the scope of this first of the arts, it will be necessary that we learn also the scope of mind of the early practisers of it, and accordingly acquaint ourselves with the main events in the biography of the schools of Florence. To understand the temper and meaning of one great master is to lay the best, if not the only, foundation for the understanding of all; and I shall therefore make it the leading aim of this course of lectures to remind you of what is known, and direct 3-ou to what is knowable, of the life and character of the greatest Florentine master of engraving, Sandro Botticelli; and, incidentally, to give you some idea of the power of the greatest master of the German, oi' any northern, school, Hans Holbein.

8. You must feel, however, that I am using the word ''engraving" in a somewhat different, and, you may imagine, a wider, sense, than that which you are accustomed to attach to it. So far from being a wider sense, it is in reality a more accurate and restricted one, while yet it embraces every conceivable right application of the art. And I wish, in this first lecture, to make entirely clear to you the proper meaning of the word, and proper range of the art of, engraving ; in my next following lecture, to show you its place in Italian schools, and then, in due order, the place it ought to take in our own, and in all schools.

9. First then, to-day, of the Differentia, or essential quality of Engraving, as distinguished from other arts.

What answer would you make to me, if 1 asked casually what engraving was ? Perhaps the readiest which would occur to you would be, " The translation of pictures into black and white by means admitting reduplication of impressions." But if that be done by lithography, we do not call it engraving, — whereas we speak contentedly and continually of seal engraving, in which there is no question of black and white. And, as scholars, you know that this customary mode of speaking is quite accurate ; and that engraving means, primarily, making a permanent cut or furrow in something. The central syllable of the word has become a sorrowful one, meaning the most permanent of furrows.

10. But are you prepared absolutely to accept this limitation with respect to engraving as a pictorial art ? Will you call nothing an engraving, except a group of furrows or cavities cut in a hard substance? What shall we say of mezzotint engraving, for instance, in which, though indeed furrows and cavities are produced mechanically as a ground, the artist's work is in effacing them ? And when we consider the power of engraving in representing pictures and multiplying them, are we to recognise and admire no effects of light and shade except those which are visibly produced by dots or furrows? I mean, will the virtue of an engraving be in exhibiting these imperfect means of its effect, or in concealing them ?

11. Here, for instance, is the head of a lO I. DEFINITION OF

soldier by Diirer, — a mere gridiron of black lines. Would this be better or worse engraving if it were more like a photograph or lithograph, and no lines seen ? — suppose, more like the head of Mr. Santley, now in all the music-shops, and really quite deceptive in light and shade, when seen from over the way ? Do you think Durer's work would be better if it were more Hke that ? And would you have me, therefore, leaving the question of technical method of production altogether to the craftsman, consider pictorial engraving simply as the production of a light-and-shade drawing, by some method permitting its multiplication for the public ?

12. This, you observe, is a very practical question indeed. For instance, the illustrations of my own lectures on sculpture are equivalent to permanent photographs. There can be little doubt that means will be discovered of thus producing perfect facsimiles of artists' drawings ; so that, if no more than facsimile be required, the old art of cutting furrows in metal may be considered as, at this day, virtually ended. And, indeed, it is said that line engravers cannot any more get apprentices, and that a pure steel or

THE ART OF ENGRAVING. I I

copper plate is not likely to be again produced, when once the old living masters of the bright field shall have been all laid in their earthfurrows.

13. Suppose, then, that this come to pass; and more than this, suppose that wood engraving also be superseded, and that instead of imperfect transcripts of drawings, on woodblocks or metal-plates, photography enabled us to give, quite cheaply, and without limit to number, facsimiles of the finished light-and-shade drawings of artists themselves. Another group of questions instantly offers itself, on these new conditions ; namely. What are the best means for a light-and-shade drawing — the pen, or the pencil, the charcoal, or the flat wash ? That is to say, the pen, producing shade by black lines, as old engraving did ; the pencil, producing shade by grey lines, variable in force ; the charcoal, producing a smoky shadow with no lines in it, or the washed tint, producing a transparent shadow with no lines in it. Which of these methods is the best ?-^ or have they, each and all, virtues to be separately studied, and distinctively applied ?

14. See how curiously the questions multiply on US. I St, Is engraving to be only considered as cut work ? 2nd, For present designs multipliable without cutting, by the sunshine, what methods or instruments of drawing will be best ? And now, 3rdly, before we can discuss these questions at all, is there not another lying at the root of both, — namely, what a light-and-shade drawing itself properly t's^ and how it differs, or should differ, from a painting, whether by mere deficiency, or by some entirely distinct merit ?

15. For instance, you know how confidently it is said, in common talk about Turner, that his works are intelligible and beautiful when engraved, though incomprehensible as paintings. Admitting this to be so, do you suppose it is because the translation into light and shade is deficient in some qualities which the painting had, or that it possesses some quality which the painting had not ? Does it please more because it is deficient in the colour which confused a feeble spectator, and offended a dogmatic one, — or because it possesses a decision in its steady linear labour which interprets, or corrects, the swift pencilling of the artist ?

16. Do you notice the two words I have just used, Decision^ and Linear? — Decision, again introducing the idea of cuts or divisions, as opposed to gradations ; Linear, as opposed to massive or broad ?

Yet we use all these words at different times in praise, v/hile they evidently mark inconsistent qualities. Softness and decision, breadth and delineation, cannot co-exist in equal degrees. There must surely therefore be a virtue in the engraving inconsistent with that of the painting, and vice versa.

Now, be clear about these three questions which we have to-day to answer.

A. Is all engraving to be cut work ?

B. If it need not be cut work, but only

the reproduction of a drawing, what methods of executing a light-and-shade drawing will be best ?

C. Is the shaded drawing itself to be consi-

dered only as a deficient or imperfect painting, or as a different thing from a painting, having a virtue of its own, belonging to black and white, as opposed to colour? 17. I will give you the answers at once, briefly, and ampHfy them afterwards.

A. All engraving must be cut work ; — that

is its differentia. Unless your effect be produced by cutting into some solid substance, it is not engraving at all.

B. The proper methods for light-and-shade

drawing vary according to subject, and the degree of completeness desired, — some of them having much in common with engraving, and others with painting.

C. The qualities of a light - and - shade

drawing ought to be entirely different from those of a painting. It is not a deficient or partial representation of a coloured scene or picture, but an entirely different reading of either. So that much of what is intelligible in a painting ought to be unintelligible in a light-and-shade study, and vice versa. You have thus three arts, — engraving, light-and-shade drawing, and painting.

Now I am not going to lecture, in this course, on painting, nor on light-and-shade drawing, but on engraving only. But I must tell you something about light-and-shade drawing first ; or, at least, remind you of what I have before told.

1 8. You see that the three elementary lectures in my first volume are on Line, Light, and Colour, — that is to say, on the modes of art which produce linear designs, — which produce effects of light, — and which produce effects of colour.

I must, for the sake of new students, briefly repeat the explanation of these.

Here is an Arabian vase, in which the pleasure given to the eye is only by lines ; — no effect of light, or of colour, is attempted. Here is a moonlight by Turner, in which there are no lines at all, and no colours at all. The pleasure given to the eye is only by modes of light and shade, or effects of light. Finally, here is an early Florentine painting, in which there are no lines of importance, and no effect of light whatever; but all the pleasure given to the eye is in gaiety and variety of colour.

19. I say, the pleasure given to the eye. The lines on this vase write something; but the ornamentation produced by the beautiful writing is independent of its meaning. So the moonlight is pleasant, first, as light ; and the figures, first, as colour. It is not the shape l6 I. DEFINITION OF

of the waves, but the Hght on them ; not the expression of the figures, but their colour, by which the ocular pleasure is to be given.

These three examples are violently marked ones ; but, in preparing to draw any object, you will find that, practically, you have to ask yourself. Shall \ aim at the colour of it, the light of it, or the lines of it ? You can't have all three ; you can't even have any two out of the three in equal strength. The best art, indeed, comes so near nature as in a measure to unite all. But the best is not, and cannot be, as good as nature ; and the mode of its deficiency is that it must lose some of the colour, some of the light, or some of the delineation. And in consequence, there is one great school which says. We will have the colour, and as much light and delineation as are consistent with it. Another which says, We will have shade, and as much colour and dehneation as are consistent with it. The third. We will have delineation, and as much colour and shade as are consistent with it.

20. And though much of the two subordinate qualities may in each school be consistent with the leading one, yet the schools are evermore separate : as, for instance, in other matters, one man says, I will have my fee, and as much honesty as is consistent with it ; another, I will have my honesty, and as much fee as is consistent with it. Though the man who will have his fee be subordinately honest, — though the man who will have his honour, subordinately rich, are they not evermore of diverse schools ?

So you have, in art, the utterly separate provinces, though in contact at their borders, of The Delineators ; The Chiaroscurists ; and The Colourists.